With the Raiders' offseason workouts over last week, cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha has a month before training camp starts to focus on his other passion: helping people. Whether it's taking disadvantaged students on educational trips cross-country, raising money for orphans in Nigeria, or helping out pal Bill Clinton with his Global Initiative University, Asomugha has everybody covered.

"Since a young age, I have always wanted to help," he said. "Family and friends did it, and it rubbed off on me. It was infectious."

There will not only be some scratching, but clapping tonight. Asomugha, along with Tyrus Thomas of the Charlotte Bobcats in the "professional athlete" category, is among 15 recipients who will be honored in Washington D.C, with a Jefferson Award, known as the "Nobel Prize for public service." Past recipients of the 38-year-old award for community service and volunteerism include Gen. Colin Powell, television personality Oprah Winfrey and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"It's something I am very humbled by," Asomugha said over the phone Monday. "And very grateful of. People are paying attention to people helping out in the community, and it would be something if someone else saw that and they went out and did something positive."

This is the first year for the athlete category, joining national recipients, unsung heroes at the community level, champion winners (affiliated with companies or organizations) and schools.

Athletes do make good role models, apparently.

"There is so much negative stuff out there that sometimes you don't hear all the positive stories about what athletes do," said Asomugha, 28. "But a professional athlete can be a very powerful and influential member of the community."

In 2007, the Cal product founded the Asomugha College Tour for Scholars, an annual college tour and mentoring program that provided high-achieving high school students of color with the opportunity to visit college campuses across the country. This March, he took 16 kids to Washington D.C.

Asomugha also serves as the chairman of his family's foundation, Orphans and Widows in Need, which provides food, shelter, medicine, vocational and literacy training, and scholarships to widows and orphans in Nigeria.